That's always been true — and it's never been an easy thing for film to convey. Which is why the possible glory of this intimate, potentially great, potentially off-putting Showtime drama (Sunday, 10 ET/PT; ***½ out of four) is the way it captures how difficult it is to establish not just fault but actions and appearances when marriages break down and affairs intrude.

Some of the ways creators Sarah Treem and Hagai Levi and director Mark Mylod have chosen to let you know their story is being told from different perspectives are obvious. A title card, for example, appears near the midpoint of Sunday's premiere, alerting you to a major shift from one character's point of view to another's.

But some of their methods are more subtle, and far more interesting. Because it's not just events that change when the narrator changes: Who makes the first sexual move; who is responsible for saving a choking child. It's the small changes that matter just as much; the way characters are dressed, how they see themselves and each other. In those shifts, The Affair perfectly captures the tricks memory and infatuation can play on all of us.

The story Treem and Levi introduce has no apparent villains, though to judge from an as yet unexplained police interrogation, a villain may someday appear. For now, you're watching four seemingly nice people stumble into each other, threatening the stability of two once-happy marriages. And as an incentive to watch, those people are played by as good a TV quartet as you're likely to find: Maura Tierney, Ruth Wilson, Dominic West and Joshua Jackson.

Noah and Helen (West and Tierney) are off wth the kids to the Hamptons to visit her hard-to-like father (John Doman, like West, a Wire veteran). Along the way, they stop at a diner and meet Alison (Wilson), a waitress whose marriage to Cole (Jackson) has been struck by tragedy.

An affair begins, though exactly how you should discover for yourself. But the story isn't just about infidelity: class, loss, gender, and the pressures that push couples apart are as significant here as sexual attraction.

Though the treatment of the younger characters is a bit heavy-handed, the four main adults are beautifully drawn and played, and they are, after all, the show's primary focus. Where they and their show go from here – and whether you want to spend ten weeks following seemingly smart adults make some obviously foolish choices — is an open question. But Sunday, at any rate, The Affair gets off to a strong start, as affairs so often do.